Yojimbo

This article is about the 1961 Japanese film. For Yojimbo, see Yojimbo (disambiguation).

用心棒 Yojimbo
Original Japanese poster
Directed by	Akira Kurosawa
Written by	Ryuzo Kikushima Akira Kurosawa
Produced by	Ryuzo Kikushima Akira Kurosawa Tomoyuki Tanaka
Starring	Toshirô Mifune Tatsuya Nakadai Yôko Tsukasa Isuzu Yamada
Cinematography	Kazuo Miyagawa Takao Saito
Music by	Masaru Satô
Distributed by	Toho Company Ltd.
Release dates	Apr 25, 1961
Running time	110 min.
Language	Japanese

Yojimbo (Japanese: 用心棒, Yōjinbō) is a 1961 jidaigeki (period drama) film by Akira Kurosawa. It tells the story of a ronin (masterless samurai), portrayed by Toshiro Mifune, who arrives in a small town where competing crime lords make their money from gambling. The ronin, who calls himself Sanjuro (meaning "thirty-year-old") convinces each crime lord to hire him as protection from the other. By careful political maneuvering and the use of his sword, he brings peace, but only by encouraging both sides to wipe each other out in bloody battles. The title of the film translates as 'bodyguard'.

Inspirations

The film's look and themes were in part inspired by the western film, in particular the films of John Ford. The characters - the taciturn loner and the helpless townsfolk needing a protector - are reminiscent of western archetypes, and the cinematography mimics conventional shots in western films such as that of the lone hero in a wide shot, facing an enemy or enemies from a distance while the wind kicks up dust between the two.

Kurosawa stated that a major source for the plot was the film noir classic The Glass Key (1942), an adaption of Dashiell Hammett's 1931 novel; the scenes of the samurai's brutal beating are copied practically shot-for-shot from that film. However, it has been noted that the plot of Yojimbo is actually much closer to another Hammett novel, Red Harvest (1932); Kurosawa scholar David Desser and critic Manny Farber, among others, state categorically that Red Harvest was the inspiration for the film; however, other scholars, such as Donald Richie, believe the similarities are coincidental. In Red Harvest, a private eye, for undetermined, perhaps quixotic, motives, determines to clean up a gang-ridden mining town by inciting every mobster against every other. The detective manages to ride out the resulting waves of murder, saving his own life but nearly at the cost of his own private code of ethics. In Red Harvest, The Glass Key and Yojimbo, corrupt officials and businessmen are seen to stand behind and profit from the rule of the gangsters.

Production

Many of the actors in Yojimbo had worked with Kurosawa before and after, especially Takashi Shimura (who appeared in Seven Samurai and Ikiru) and Tatsuya Nakadai.

At one point the hero, beaten, disarmed and left for dead, recovers in a small hut where he practices with his throwing knife by pinning a fluttering leaf. This effect was created by reversing the film: in reality, the leaf was pinned, the knife yanked away by a wire, and the leaf blown away.

Influence

Yojimbo had a considerable influence on subsequent cinema, in both Japan and the West.

Kurosawa directed a companion piece to Yojimbo in 1962, entitled Sanjuro, in which Mifune returns as the ronin, who keeps his "given name" Sanjuro (meaning "Thirtysomething") but he takes a different "surname" (in both films, he takes his surname from the plants he happens to be looking at when asked his name).

In 1964, Yojimbo was remade as A Fistful of Dollars, a spaghetti western directed by Sergio Leone and starring Clint Eastwood in his first appearance as the Man with No Name. Leone and his production company failed to secure the remake rights to Kurosawa's film, resulting in a lawsuit that delayed Fistful's release in North America for three years. In Yojimbo, the protagonist defeats a man with a gun, when he carries only a knife and a sword; in the equivalent scene in Fistful, Eastwood's character survives the gun battle by hiding an iron plate under his clothes to serve as a shield against bullets.

The 1970 film Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo also features Mifune as a similar character. It is one of a series of movies featuring the blind swordsman Zatoichi. Although it is never explicitly stated that this is the same character as in the original film, the title and a number of nods to the original very strongly imply this.

Last Man Standing (1996), a prohibition era gangster thriller, directed by Walter Hill and starring Bruce Willis, is an officially authorized remake of Yojimbo.

The anime series Kaze no Yojimbo (2001; literally Bodyguard of the Wind), produced by Kurosawa Productions retells the story of the original film in the modern era. Many of the characters and events in the series are analogous to characters and events in Yojimbo, but additional subplots and characters are added to expand it into a 25-episode TV series and to distinguish it from Kurosawa's film.

The Playstation 2 game Way of the Samurai has many elements heavily inspired by Yojimbo. In that game, the player takes on the role of a wandering samurai who drifts into a small town caught between warring factions. In the game, the player can align himself with any of the factions, can remain neutral, or can be completely immoral, and fight against anyone and everyone he encounters. The path the player takes determines the outcome of the storyline and the ending of the game, however, to get the "best" ending, the player ultimately will align himself with both gangs and play both sides in order to free the townspeople from oppression. There is also a point in the storyline where the player, armed with only his swords, may have to fight the town's sheriff, who carries a pistol.

File:Toshiro.jpg

Toshiro Mifune as the nameless protagonist of Yojimbo

Other films which borrow from the plot of Yojimbo include:

• Youth of the Beast (1963), a modern Japanese yakuza crime film directed by Seijun Suzuki and starring Jo Shishido
• The Warrior and the Sorceress (1984), a sword and sorcery movie directed by John C. Broderick and starring David Carradine
• Omega Doom (1997), a low-budget post-apocalyptic action film involving cybernetic robots, starring Rutger Hauer.
• Desert Heat (1999; aka Inferno or Coyote Moon), an action movie directed by John G. Avildsen and starring Jean Claude Van Damme
• Lucky Number Slevin (2006) a contemporary take on the film, also featuring Willis.

External links

• Yojimbo at IMDb
• Criterion Collection essay by Alexander Sesonske